"Thoughts on this counterfactual?" Topic

Supposing somehow Germany manages to win on the Eastern Front in 1941-2. By 'win' I mean take Lenigrad, Moscow and Stalingrad and drive the Red Army back to the east side of the Volga. Russia has not actually surrendered but the majority of Russia's armed forces have been rounded up, the only residual route for Lend-Lease supplies is via the Russian Far East and that is pretty difficult owing to the Japan situation. This counts as a win so far as Germany is concerned. That the line of the Volga now has to be held is just a minor irritant, given the state to which Russian resistance has been reduced.

There is no western front, because with nobody tying up 80% of the German army (some lower percentage sure but not 80), western Europe really is a fortress.

Much weapon development stopped, pretty much, in 1942. Germany developed the Tiger I and the Panther but not the Tiger II. Jets and helicopters happened. By 1950 China is in Communist hands so the world is looking a lot like that of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four except that his Eurasia is in fact Nazi.

So my question is – how would you hold that line if you were Germany? You have no further interest in territory east of the Volga, but you intend to settle right up to it, but how would you defend it in, say, 1950? In particular, look at Samara:

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A peninsula projecting from west to east that's within artillery range from all sides. Would you occupy and hold that salient on the west bank or would you consider it indefensible? If you abandon it how do you stop its use as a bridgehead on the west bank of the Volga?

If you're Russia what do you do? If you're the west what do you do?

After looking at the map, I'd make a canal if I had the time to do so. Make it an island. See if I can't turn it into some god awful swampy island. Shortens my lines. Takes away the natural jumping off point. Makes it a very bad place to attack. These are the same Nazis who flooded French lowlands in preparation to defend on DDay

Think Germans would HAVE to keep pushing… unless Russian Command /Stalin, etc. collapsed. Remember, Russians relocated MUCH of war material production… would be back… with shorter supply line.

Would GREATLY depend upon whether USA became involved… and to what degree.

Would North Africa then become the main jumping off point for an allied invasion?

Stalin made a series of peace offers from 1941–1944. The first in July 1941 offered to cede the Baltics, Ukraine (presumably including the Crimean peninsula which was not then part of Ukraine) to Germany. The second in May 1942 added Belarus.

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Boy, 4C. Talk about BIG and speculative questions. I honestly would not know where to start – so many loose strings.

One point I will offer though – As a result of the peace terms agreed by Japan after its defeat by the USSR in the pre-WW2 Khalkin Gol campaign, Japan never attacked, interfered with or interrupted the trans-Pacific sea/air L/L traffic between the USA and USSR. Of course, what Japan might have done in the event of the USSR being so badly handled as you have theoretically proposed is probably another matter altogether.

FWIW.

B

This was only going to happen if the UK made peace early on, and Germany never declared war on the U.S. Otherwise, can you say "atom bomb"?

I suspect you wind up with a defense-in-depth, based on a fortified frontier that bears some resemblance (conceptually speaking) to the Roman limes. But I don't think this liberates as many German troops as you might imagine. The occupying force for the smaller area they won in 1918 occupied so many German and Austrian troops that it effectively deprived them of the margin for victory over the Allies, and they weren't simultaneously trying to carry out history's largest social engineering/genocide project.

There are other counterfactuals that take us away from that, of course, but you have to change the essential nature of the Nazi system to the point where it's unrecognizable to get to them.

Senator, to your point, I have been rereading Roberta Wohlstetter's book on Pearl Harbor. It's a striking reminder of how thoroughly the American leadership was convinced from the summer of 1941 onward that Japan was about to invade Russia. And why not? It was the move that made the best strategic sense. It was more likely to be within Japan's strategic reach than a maritime war against the US and the UK. It would certainly have drawn Soviet troops from the west, and it might well have precipitated a Soviet collapse. It would probably have avoided American intervention, and at worst would have ensured that it was reluctant and limited. It would have been a better long term choice than a raid on Pearl Harbor.

Interesting note. The Japanese never interfered with Russian ships coming from America to the Russian Pacific ports. They didn't want to risk bringing Russia into the war.

Hi nine pound round!

You wrote

Senator, to your point, I have been rereading Roberta Wohlstetter's book on Pearl Harbor. It's a striking reminder of how thoroughly the American leadership was convinced from the summer of 1941 onward that Japan was about to invade Russia.

>>>>> I have not read Ms Wohlstetter's book, but her commentary puzzles me. Did she address the dire embargo situation that existed at the time between Japan and the USA? Japan was desperately reliant upon the USA for her oil and steel and other raw material needs and the USA was really turning the economic embargo screws on Japan, insisting (basically) that she altogether get out of China and Manchuria (a resource rich region where a lot of Japanese money, migration and industrial development had been committed. I don't see how Japan could have realistically entertained the idea of attacking the USSR without some sort of prior agreement, tacit or otherwise, by the "Roosevelt regime".

BTW, I'm retired from the Senate ;-) Still married to my cheerleader wife, though ….. "Go Faber!"

B

Perhaps – novel thought -if the Germans and Japanese had actually acted like they were allied rather than just two countries with a bunch of mutual enemies they might have done something. Japan attacking the Russian Far East at the same time as Barbarosso springs to mind. Also what if the Luftwaffe had Zeroes during the Battle of Britain (i.e. fighters with an endurance of up to 12 hours versus the Me-109 that had endurance of just over one hour)?

@ donlowry:
Re the atom bomb, in this counterfactual I'm not convinced the US would have disclosed the existence of such a weapon, much less used it. With Eurasia in Germany's undefeated hands from the Pyrenees to the Urals, and no means of occupying territory in western Europe, what US goal would have been served by nuking Germany? I don't see the USA decapitating Germany so that Russian communists can re-establish the USSR.

@ nine pound round:
The difference between this hypothetical and WW1 is that in the latter, Germany faced two fronts. A German victory in the east in 1942 would surely ensure there was no second front. The gains there would have been defended by high quality air assets including jets by 1944 at the latest. Your suggestion of some sort of version of the limes strikes me as quite plausible; how deep would this have been? Would the no-man's-land be on the German side of the Volga or the Russian? How would it be defended – aggressively via air incursions, long range patrols etc, or would you just leave 50 miles of empty land on the western bank?

@ smithsco: very interesting point re flooding. That salient's about 20 miles wide and the opposite southern bank is swampy. Probably it could not be controlled by artillery from the Russian side, but if Germany occupied it there's have to be a huge risk of the forces there being cut off by river crossings pinching off the salient.

@ Andy ONeill: thanks, I didn't know. I do wonder whether a Russia that had lost everything west of the Volga would still have been a viable state. There would be some oil left east of the Urals but no way to export it.

@ Frederick: the Axis was a political alliance not a military one, characterised by mutual racial disdain. They only worked together when it was clear they'd lost.

She did address that- although in the case I referenced, the people whom she quoted as being focused on the idea of the Japanese invading Russia were Admiral Stark and one of the Hawaiian Department G-2 officers. Her point was that the Americans were looking the wrong way (they were definitely cognizant of the ability of the embargo to spark an attack, but they thought it would be aimed at Malaya, the DEI and the Philippines).

4C: the limes idea strikes me as the kind of thing Hitler would have come up with: expect brutal clearance of the population for fifty miles on the eastern bank, with combined arms patrols to keep it that way. On the frontier itself, which is too long for continuous defense, a program of strongpoints backed up by mobile forces.

The larger strategic question of how and whether Germany could have won if Russia collapsed is fascinating, but I think Germany was still foredoomed. The Anglo-American force structure needed to defeat Germany would surely have been different, but I think those two powers could still have pulled it off with a more intense mobilization than the US actually undertook. The one window of opportunity the Axis really had was in mid-1941, but they never came close to the kind of strategic coordination that the Allies pulled off.

How could they have done it? Assuming success in Russia, it would have required rapid reconcentration on the Near East on the part of the Germans and Italians to close the Suez Canal, coupled with a Japanese offensive aimed not at Australia, but at cutting the sea lines in the Indian Ocean. Had Japan and Germany been able to force the collapse of the British Empire east of Suez before American war potential became effective, then they might have forced the US to acquiesce in the "New Order." For all that the German Army bled to death in Russia, it was Britain that was probably the necessary power to the war's continuation and victory, not Russia.

Given how grandiose some German architectural plans were and assuming the same to be applied to engineering projects, I can see them digging a canal across the base of the western peninsula formed by the bulge in the Volga River's course. Then let the Volga River cut itself a new path thus eliminating the peninsula. It's not as if they would be hurting for land to settle.

Hitler devoted more attention to design than any other aspect of the process of producing anything, from buildings to tanks, and he strove for aesthetic effects. It's one reason why the Nazi war effort prioritized the spectacular over the practical, and a contributing factor to Germany's defeat. Add to that Hitler's whimsical, semi-random method of prioritizing and decision-making, and you've got a recipe for what happened.

For something like border limes, expect detailed attention to how the thing looked: he would have conceptualized it as the frontier of the thousand year Reich, so I suppose there would have been enormous, squat bunkers with long cleared glacis overlooking river banks shaped so that gunfire could sweep the glacis and river.

If you imagine something that's expensive, impressive-looking, time consuming to build, and doesn't really work all that well, you'll get the effect exactly.

I tend to agree with the OP. If Russia had been reduced to a rump beyond the Volga, it has at that point lost 80% of its population and industry and ceases to be a credible threat to "Eurasia" and the war is effectively over.

The Volga border could be held as described above, a tripwire line with mobile reserves in depth, but Tbh, all it is really going to face is nuisance terrorist incursions, and with the destruction of the USSR there is nothing to stop Communist China absorbing Siberia etc. So the border will most likely be against China, not a rump USSR.

I can't see any way the US and UK could pull off a seaborne invasion of Fortress Europe under these circumstances.

Look. Germans TOOK Stalingrad, were VERY close to Moscow and Leningrad was totally sieged. And they lost. Impetus and forces worn out…Rus fought back. No way a reinforced Germany could NOT have pushed on… if it could. But UK… and USA were up a**e end… W Desert, Torch, Italy… then Normandy… and VERY big plus to bombing campaigns. If no W Front… maybe, could have pushed… but rest is History.

In terms of how Germany could win in the east in 1941-2, it relies on the counterfactual (enormous, given Hitler) of starting the invasion a month or two sooner and preparing properly for winter conditions. Once the line of the Volga has been taken, it would not be too hard to get Turkey, Iran and Iraq to join the Axis. That solves the oil problem in perpetuity and the Suez Canal can be taken overland from the north-east rather than by sea and land from the west. This largely removes the Commonwealth from the Med, so Malta and Crete etc fall not long afterwards.

It's not at all clear that the USA gets actively involved in this war. Even if Pearl Harbor still happened, if he's winning in Russia Hitler needn't bother declaring war on the USA. He didn't have to do so at all under the terms of the Axis pact, because Japan had not been attacked. If he does not do that, then the USA swats Japan in double quick time but is never at war with Germany.

With Italy still in the war, USA not, and north Africa still Axis, there's no prospect of liberating France via the Mediterranean – or at all. D-Day would have to be in the north as per history, but in the face of an unbeaten enemy with no exposed flanks, i.e. could not be attempted. There could have been no Bomber Command campaign against German cities because the air defence would have been much stronger, and indeed the Germans could have resumed their own air attacks on Britain.

Between this, the defeat of the USSR and the non-involvement of the USA in Europe, I see every prospect of a German-Commonwealth armistice some time in 1942.

@ Nine pound round, "brutal clearance of the population for fifty miles on the eastern bank, with combined arms patrols to keep it that way…strongpoints backed up by mobile forces" and "something that's expensive, impressive-looking, time consuming to build, and doesn't really work all that well" strikes me as very much on the money. Good thinking there.

I like Martin's "tripwire" line too, although I am not wholly persuaded by the idea of an eventual German-Chinese border. It is easy to forget just how huge Eurasia is – from the Volga, the nearest bit of China is 1,500 miles east.

Hitler didn't have to do much different, just accept Stalin's terms in 42.

In reality, attacking Russia early wasn't viable.

If you want to get wild.

Remember that there were pre war negotiations for Russia to join the axis powers.

At the risk of hijacking the thread, and diverting it away from your original question, I think it's conceivable that the US and UK would have taken on the Germans, but it would have been such a dramatically different conflict that it would have been unrecognizable- strategic plans, production and manpower allocation choices and even equipment types would probably all have been dramatically different.

That being said- and even before you take the inefficiencies and irregularities of the Nazi system into account- even without the Russians, the British and Americans probably still had the raw power to overmatch Germany, Italy and Japan. The degree of unreadiness was pretty high in 1940-41, but there's a sense in which the Allied effort didn't reach full stride until 1943. It would suffer for not having Russian manpower, but OTOH, the raw materials that went into Lend-Lease could have instead been used to feed a differently structured Allied effort- one that would almost certainly include nuclear weapons.

Even if Germany held a Volga line, and chosen it to finish off the Russians. Then they would drive south from the Caucasus into Iraq and Iran to hit Egypt and make the Med an Axis lake.

Possibly push into East Africa and get U boats into the Indian Ocean and now holding Suez let the large Italian fleet into the Indian Ocean.

Looking at the line of the Volga, for some reasons most of the river cities seem to be on its west bank. There is a bit of sprawl obviously, and the odd exception, but not many.

You have to go about 300 to 500 miles east of the Volga to find a substantial city: Perm, Yekaterinburg. Beyond those another 300+ miles to find another city. Eventually cities just stop.

Does anyone with a knowledge of political geography know why this feature of the Volga might be? Has the Volga always been recognised as the edge of the world or something, so that expansion more or less stopped there?

Hmmm- maybe in that part of Russia, the threat usually came from the East- or did when those cities were settled?

For the rest, my guess is that civilization is riparian: you probably had to cross the Urals to find another navigable waterway, and the population clustered there. The Russian east has some interesting cultural parallels to the American West, but in North America, the phenomenon of settlement following waterways is an east-of-the-Mississippi phenomenon. West of the Mississippi, with the significant exceptions of the Columbia and Missouri basins, it follows the railroad lines.

Mongols seem most likely explanation to me.

I recently read "Stalingrad" by French historian Jean Lopez. He's analysing the prevailing mood in Soviet command circles at the time, and to be honest, that mood was quite gloomy. Stalin had been wrong-footed again, as he was expecting the main German thrust towards Moscow, not towards the Caucasus. THe logistical difficulties doomed Fall Blau, and the Wehrmacht never could go beyond Maikop and Grozny indeed, but the Red Army was in atelling state and, more importantly, war had imposed such hardships on teh Soviet populace that national morale was quite fragile. Lopez does not answer the questiuon he's asking in his book, but leaves us wondering about the consequences of the fall of Stalingrad on the Russian will to keep fighting.

To get back to the original post, there was no way the Wehrmacht could have achieved the capture of Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad in 1942 : Stalin was expecting, as I said, the German main thrust to be at Moscow, and there were consequent forces in the Germans' path. Furthermore, the war in the East demonstrated the abysmal lack of German logistical planning and capacities. Fall Blau had already overtaxed the Wehrmacht in this respect. Which is also illustrated by the fact that the Red Army successes were not possible before the Stavka could get an ample supply of Studebaker and GMC trucks (one of the reasons military production could be focused on armoured vehicles, especially tanks).

I think one must keep in mind the enormity of Soviet Russia up to the Volga. How many men and materials to guard all of that? Not to mention occupying and controlling everything from the German border to the Volga River and Western Europe. Just the armies of resistance fighters alone would be a manpower drain.

The thing everyone is missing is the Nazi policy of killing every Jew and other people that existed in the lands the Germans controlled. In 1945 Germany used the majority of their rail capacity in transporting Jews to be murdered.

It had the highest priority. The Slavs, Jews, Gypsies, etc. were to be relocated or more likely exterminated to make room for German settlers (even though the majority of German civilians didn't want to live there.) It would take millions of German personnel to manage all of this. There would be additional killing camps to set up and maintain.

I think you might be at the point in all of this, that German manpower, rail capacity, and industry would collapse.
The Japanese have no motive to invade the Soviet Union. They still would go South in 1941 to capture all the resources they needed.

I still think that Japan would try to knock out the Americans in one blow at Pearl Harbor. Hitler would without question foolishly declare war on the USA.

This has been brought up earlier, the question of nuclear weapons. All the major belligerents had nuclear weapon programs and they all amounted to nothing until 1949. Only the USA had the industrial capacity and talent to manufacture atomic bombs. Germany's bomb program was an abject failure.

I can easily picture fleets of escorted B-29s firebombing Germany. Air defenses and jets be damned. Then a lone ignored B-29 drops a uranium bomb but most likely a plutonium bomb on Berlin with the hope of knocking out the Nazi leadership. This would be repeated until every major German city is destroyed. I do not doubt that the Allies would still make a cross-channel invasion in 45 or 46.

So let's say zer Chermans have built a bunch of watchtowers along the west bank ofthe Volga each 200m tall and 100m in diameter, with 5m thick concrete walls. On the roof is a helipad, and from here, you can see 51km in all directions. On the next level down are 11" guns from retired battleships.

How much further can the ex-naval guns fire, given they are 190m off the ground? Assume their gunfire is being directed by spotter helos.

I make it to be about 5km more than otherwise, on the basis that the shell takes 6 seconds to fall to the ground from that height and is doing about 800m downrange.

Distance (in miles) = 1.17 times the square root of your height of eye (in feet)
(from link )
So a 190m high gun would be able to observe fire to 29 miles. According to the Wicked Podiatrist the 28 cm battleship guns had a maximum range of 44,000 yards (22 miles) (at 40 degree elevation).
It doesn't give the angle of impact at max range but I'd assume it is near vertical. Between 20k and 30k it doubles from 15 to 30 degrees, a sharp increase.
So I'd give your watchtower 11" guns a max range of 22 miles or 40 km.

Regarding German 'settlers' in Eastern Europe. There was a rather unsettling TV doc… where diggers thought to find German soldier remains. What was unearthed was remains of woman.. Nazi… she had a worker's badge… and rubber pants from a toddler. War is not nice.

@ Murvihill

Interesting, Idid it using Pythagoras. The 200m watchtower is an extension of the earth's radius and the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle. From the top, the line of sight is a tangent to a point an unknown distance away. That point is on the surface, and a line between it and the centre of the earth is the length of the earth's radius. The radius and tangent lines form a right angle.

So if the centre of the earth is A, the top of the tower is B and the horizon point is C, AB is the hypotenuse and BC and CA are its opposite and adjacent sides.

Thus BC^2 + CA^2 = AB^2

the earth's radius is 6,371km.

Thus BC^2 + 6,371^2 = 6,371.2^2

BC^2 = 40,592,189 – 40,589,641

BC^2 = 2,548

BC = 50.5 km = 31.4 miles

which is pretty close to your 29 miles, allowing for the fact that I used a height 10m greater.

The gist though is that fired at 0 degrees elevation the round would fall further away, but well inside its max range. At maximum elevation the added height would make little difference because although falling from a greater height, it's coming down near enough vertically?

I didn't do the math when I was in the Navy, they explained the theory and gave us the formula.
As far as angle of impact, I'd assume that at the end of its run a shell has little forward motion. Without all the physics of it figured though (wind resistance etc) I can't give you the numbers.

You might be surprised- angles of fall for low-angle rounds tend to be pretty comparable to elevation. This is an extract from a firing table for a 155mm firing charge 4 green bag:

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Page down to Table G, Supplementary Data. Elevations are in mils, not degrees, so 45 degrees = 800 mils (everything beneath the starred line indicates high angle fire). What you'll see is that the basic elevation, under standard conditions, produces a pretty comparable angle of fall, regardless of whether you're firing at low angles or high angles (>45 degrees/800 mild).